Looking for FI (not necessarily RE) guidance

Hi all,

I read about FIRE perhaps 10 or 15 years ago, but never made it a personal goal of mine to be FI by any particular age. Now I am feeling a bit less certain about the future in terms of career prospects and am trying to better understand where I am and what it will take to get me to FI. Honestly, though, I don't want to retire yet. I just want to be in a position where I COULD lose my job and not have it be an emergency event.

Here's my breakdown, I'm interested in thoughts on my situation. I am 46M, and married to a 50F. We have two children.

NW: about $2.1M.

Asset breakdown: $800k in my 401(k), ~$400k in my wife's. $350k in my wife's Roth and $350k in mine also. About $100k in 529 accounts, to help pay for college. I also have about $28k in an HSA I started a few years ago and have been maxing out. House: $200k – $250k depending on market conditions. This is a small, modest house for the area, but we like it and do not plan to move. Unfortunately, I only just started rebuilding an emergency fund, and nothing in any taxable brokerage account.

Liability breakdown: $19.5k on our mortgage (2.99%) and $7.4k on a second mortgage (3.75%) I also owe about $17.5k on a car at 0% interest, about 3 more years on the loan. We are due to payoff the main mortgage late 2027. After that I plan to snowball on the second mortgage just to get it over with.

Income: I earn about $150k + a yearly bonus of 0-10% depending on company performance. Wife earns about $80k. We live in a LCOL area.

Spending: I've only just started tracking this carefully again. Mortgage: $1k P+I. Property taxes: $440. Car payment: $470. Second mortgage: $420. Food: Aiming for $1k. Child care: $460, but this ends later this year (yay!), and I pay for this with a dependent care FSA so it's pre-tax money. Utilities: ~$400. Home insurance: $140, Auto insurance: $170. Most years we do a trip overseas, this year it works out to $500 per month. Kids activities: $275. Misc other: $400. Rounding up that's about $6k per month, $72k per year.

Saving: I usually get close to maxing out my 401(k) ($22k last year), my wife now maxes hers including catch-up contributions, so about $32k per year. We used to max our Roth IRAs but now we contribute maybe $3k per year. I save about $8k per year in an HSA. Last year we saved about $10.6k in 529 plans, though we plan to cut that back a bit this year to get the emergency fund built up. All together that's about $78.1k in savings.

Now that I wrote this out, I'm trying to figure out where the rest of my money went last year. Our federal taxes were about $17k last year, state taxes were $4k, local taxes were $2.6k. I don't have my wife's payslip handy, but I assume some of this is pretax health insurance, dental insurance, etc.

Anyway…

What I want to do is start building an emergency fund (right now we have maybe 1 month of expenses in bank accounts), and then extend that into a taxable brokerage or treasuries that can be a bridge fund I could draw from if my wife or I were to lose our jobs. Even if we do not, this bridge fund will help me get closer to FI. I am aiming for 12 months of expenses in liquid HYSA (right now interest is 3.25%), and anything beyond that in iBonds, treasuries, or lower risk index investments at a taxable brokerage.

My wife has no plans to RE, she likes working. I also like working, but I decided that FI is very important to me. I may have an opportunity to take a job that I may enjoy more (and may have more long term security) but would be a pay cut, I would feel a lot better about doing this if I had a good emergency fund and were on the way to making a bridge fund. I also would feel a lot better having my house paid off, as well as the car, to reduce yearly expenses by $24k, but for now I plan to just pay it off per the plan.

I realized recently that for emergencies, we could withdraw our Roth IRA principal, but I'd prefer not to, I'd rather just have money in taxable accounts for this purpose. I'd like to get back to maxing out my Roth IRA, actually.

Also, I'm not sure whether my current work's 401(k) allows early withdraws according to the Rule of 55. Do I need to ask my company or Fidelity this?

Please give me any thoughts or opinions you have.

Thanks!